Dir: Andreas Dresen / Germany / 2008 / 98 mins / Cert: CLUB
Love hurts - even when you’re over sixty. That’s the message of German indie director Andreas Dresen’s tough new drama, which follows with stark handheld directness, the confusion, joy and suffering of apparently happily married Inge, a woman in her mid-sixties who begins an affair with an older man.
The camera does not shy away even when things get steamy, but this film draws its strength from its tight dramatic focus rather than any shock value.
Dresen finds a new visual calm here, and even a touch of Vermeer in a recurring shot down a corridor into a sunlight-filled kitchen, which is a long way from the jerky, grainy aesthetic of the director’s award-winning Grill Point (2001).
A couple of recurring motifs are neatly and sparingly used and include trains, which play a role - we infer - in the film’s devastating denouement. - Lee Marshall / Screen International
